Made A Wood Perch

[OlBenny]

Hello All :-) ,

 

This past weekend I was visiting my parents and I told my dad that I wanted to make a play stand for my bird.

After looking over the list of "bird safe wood", my dad and I settled on Hickory. We have a ton of these trees scattered through out our woods (also we use it for smoking all the meat we process :laugh: ). Any way, we cut the tree down and I took what I needed from it and proceeded to make the stand. I didn't use any screw of any sort. I am banking on the fact that as the trunk dries out, the holes will shrink, pinching the branches in the holes. When I was all done I noticed this Moss looking stuff. My question is this moss looking stuff toxic? I allready scrapped off every thing I could, but now I am wondering if I should just make a new one. Let me know what you all think :-)

 

Ben

[cflanny]

You need to atleast scrub it with a 10% bleach solution and if possible bake the branches @250 for a hour. If the branches are too big to bake and you think they may have bugs you can seal it air tight in saran wrap or a big plastic bag for 30 days. The branches should be cleaned and disifected at least with the solution and a brush. Hope this helps I just made mine and it beautiful

[OlBenny]

OK, sounds good.

I made it a little on the big side, so baking it isn't going to work, but I can bleach it.

Thanks for the advice! :-)

[Dave007]

cflanny is right and another thing you should consider doing is taking that wood and soaking it in warm water for a couple of hours and then pull off all of the bark that's on those branches. You'll be left with clean hard wood.

[OlBenny]

Hello,

Just curious, but why would I need to strip the bark if I bleach it? If I soak the entire stand in a %10 bleach water solution, wouldn't that take care of the limbs to?

The only reason I ask is that I like the way it looks with the bark on.

Let me know what you think,

Ben Fort

 

I'll put some pics of it on when I get a chance ;-)

[cflanny]

not sure on the bark mabey just looking for bugs?? I forgot to mention leave the solution on for just about 10 or 15 min then rinse well )